Comments

This is off-topic, Ross, but are you the Pulitzer Prize winner Desmogblog says you are? This is important to clarify because you are part of a web site dedicated to calling the credentials and motives of others into question. Therefore you have to be squeaky clean. Steve Milloy, who runs the Junkscience.com web site thinks you are a phony. Here is what he wrote today, April 17, 2007:

“That honor is reserved exclusively for the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University - and according to the Pulitzer Prize Board, Ross Gelbspan has never won the award. Check it out for yourself - search the Pulitzer Prize web site for “Gelbspan.” You won’t find him listed anywhere.

Not too long ago, Gelbspan’s brand of dishonesty – that is, lying to enhance one’s public image while simultaneously labeling those who point out the truth as liars – would be cause for general ridicule and scorn. But since Gelbspan fancies himself as trying to save the planet from global warming and an evil industry cabal, normal standards of truthfulness don’t seem to apply. Political correctness means never having to tell the truth.

Gelbspan calls the truth about his not winning the Pulitzer Prize “character assassination.” In reality, Gelbspan is a character who has assassinated the truth.”

Regardless of what you think of Milloy, Ross, does the Pulitzer board list you as a prize winner or not? A “yes” or “no” should suffice.

We get lots of abuse on this site for attacks that are alleged to be ad hominem - the implication being that we are often criticizing people rather than their (imagined) scientific arguments. Often, I don't get the link. For instance, when we call Fred Singer a liar and an industry apologist - a man who has made his living making exuses for everyone from Philip Morris to Exxon Mobil - it's because we believe it is relevant to the case at hand. Singer has demonstrated that he is currently engaged in public relations, not science. He has demonstrated a determination to misrepresent that fact even as he continues to try to poison the public debate on climate change. That, in my mind, is much more relevant than any of the unsourced blather he spouts about climate science.

Here, on the other hand, is a completely different case. Ross Gelbspan is a journalist and a damn good one. He reports a story on the blog, complete with a source. There is no appeal to authority here - no point in which Ross asks that we take HIS word for something. He is, in good journalistic fashion, passing on information that speaks for itself.

… in response to which we get John Dowell's gratuitous slander.

We have been all over Steve Milloy's Pulitzer snivelling in the past; it's as tiresome as it is irrelevant. But anyone who really wants to review the record can go here .

In the meantime, Mr. Dowell, if you can find a single instance in which Ross asks people to believe what he says because he's an expert - or if Ross ever begins a post on this site by saying, “I'm a Pulitzer Prize winner, so you should believe me,” then I insist that you raise this issue again and forcefully.

If not - if Ross continues instead to provide a steady flow of interesting, relevant, credible and well-sourced information, all of which stands on its own - then I suggest you move on.

Nice try, Richard, but the burden of proof is not on me, it is on you. You Desmoggers gloss Gelbspan’s journalistic credentials by stating that he is a Pulitzer Prize winner – therefore he is to be trusted as an exceptionally objective and honest reporter of facts. Why else mention his Pulitzer Prize if you are not trying to build trust in his abilities?

Absent any response from you stating, “Yes Ross Gelbspan won a Pulitzer Prize and here’s the proof”, we can conclude the answer is “no – Mr. Gelbspan has never won a Pultizer Prize”.

So Desmgoblog is guilty of misrepresenting one of its principal contributors in order to build public trust in him. Isn’t that what you accuse Tim Ball of doing?

If Gelbspan is such a “damn good” journalist, why has he never corrected this fundamental factual error on the Desmogblog web site? Getting the facts right is what one would expect of a Pulitzer Prize winner. No?

Richard’s web site offers no proof that Gelbspan won a Pulitzer. In fact, by tap dancing around the issue, it suggests the opposite. Apparently no one can find his name on the the Pulitzer website that lists past prize winners. Isn’t it time for Desmogblog to come clean on this matter and stop linking Ross to this prize, leading casual readers to believe he actually won it?

He is no doubt a fine journalist but I, for one, took his Pulitzer Prize as fact, based on what Desmogblog was stating… that is until I saw Steven Milloy’s comment today. I have been deliberately deceived by Desmogblog.

John, if you even think that Milloy is an honest person then you are even a bigger fool that you have shown in previous posts. You are one despicable human being to act the way you do on this blog. You offer nothing but gratuitous swipes at anything you feel will affect your arrogant, dishonest and compassionless lifestyle. I would sure hate to be a neighbour or co-worker of yours if you treat everyone in that manner.

Get a life or go back to your right wing blogs where people will bow their heads in amazement at the “wonderful” things you “know” about climate change. Junkscience .com and climatefraudit would be much more welcoming of your dishonesty.

I seem to have touched a nerve with my comments on Mr. Gelbspan and his mythical Pulitzer Prize. Could it be that Demoggers like to dish it out but get downright cranky when some of it blows back on them?

That aside, here is the listing from the Pulitzer Prize website for the Bostom Globe’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize that Demsogblog wants us to think Mr. Gelbspan won:

Kenneth Cooper, Joan Fitz Gerald, Jonathan Kaufman, Norman Lockman, Gary Mc Millan, Kirk Scharfenberg and David Wessel of Boston Globe – For their series examining race relations in Boston, a notable exercise in public service that turned a searching gaze on some the city’s most honored institutions including the Globe itself.

So, Ian, is the Pulitzer web site lying? And BTW, Ian, a search of the Pultizer web site prize winners turned up nothing when I entered the name of Ross Gelbspan – just as Steven Milloy stated. But he’s a liar, right?

It's just that your comments detract from the initial post. By attacking Ross you're only demonstrating that you have nothing to contribute by the way of climate science and the ensuing discussion which is the point of this blog.

You people never bother to check your sources or facts. The Pulitzer affair was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction years ago. Only slime balls and scumbags like the deniers who inhabit this blog still believe that it is a story. It just shows that you people have nothing left just more and more lies and make-believe.

By the way Zog, your hero is Milloy not Millroy. Good grief you cannot even get the names of the few people on your side right. It just goes to show how stupid you are. Do us all a favour and disappear since you are just wasting our time.

My hero? Hell, until today I was only vaguely aware of him but now, thanks to you and John, I’ll be checking his blog regularly. He seems to have a pretty good nose for sniffing out pseudo-scientific scams.

He has a better command of the English language than you do too. He can actually write a full sentence without consulting the Desmog Thesaurus of Childish Invective.

At no point has the DeSmogBlog said that Ross won a Pulitzer (although I stand by his right to do so). We said: “As special projects editor of The Boston Globe, he conceived, directed and edited a series of articles that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984.”

John, Zog: you’ve succeeded in creating what must be the most ridiculous “scandal” ever. I don’t know if Ross has ever claimed the prize as his own (he doesn’t on this site), but if he has, it would not even merit the term “impropriety”. His colleagues at the Globe have extended the credit to him, and so should you. Howling for your pound of flesh does you no credit. It just reinforces the notion that, for you, the climate debate is a question of personal pride, not truth.

Ian, Stpehen: why so worked up? Blowing a fuse on the internet serves absolutely no purpose, ever, and you just feed the braying idiots in the peanut gallery with an exaggerated sense of their own importance.

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